Powder and stone, or, why medieval rulers loved castles

IME, it's not popular to say it on HN, but it's essential to know your author - information is never divorced from a person (sometimes it's a programmer). You're not smart enough to evaluate knowledge unless you have expertise yourself, and even then it's essential to know who wrote it - note that is the lead piece of information in scholarly cites. Here I see no description beyond,

> I try to learn all the time. I make stuff sometimes. And dream about space the rest of the time. Proud Neptune-stan. Ask me about Neptune.

And here is their process:

> the synthesis of parts from several books + papers and discussions with friends

Also know the institution, in this case the 1517 Fund. From their About page,

> In 2010, our team cofounded the Thiel Fellowship with Peter Thiel to prove out a simple belief: great founders don’t need university degrees. That was a $100k grant program – and it gave birth to projects like Ethereum, companies like Figma, OYO Rooms, and Luminar, and funds like the Longevity Fund. We started 1517 to scale that further and expand the support and community that the Thiel Fellowship started.

Just-a-guy-on-the-Internet, and in an org with an agenda, is the source of all sorts of nonsense.

I'm replying to your central thesis,

    information is never divorced from a person (sometimes it's a programmer). You're not smart enough to evaluate knowledge unless you have expertise yourself

A few loosely connected points,

  – outsourcing your thinking to "experts" is just as bad as outsourcing your thinking to LLMs. In both cases, you are placing the onus of thinking on an outside source, and depriving yourself of the richness of life in the long run.

  – I quote the literature for a reason. *I don't want you to take my word for it.* You can read Caesar's and Robert McNamara's thoughts; you can get context directly from historians; and then see the story told via tapestry to draw your own conclusion.

  – I also do my best to link to specific pages of the sources so that you can read the quotes in context. It takes a lot of effort to do this. As things aren't always publicly available, and it's a PITA to keep track of everything.

  – you're harkening to the idea that there "adults" in the room. There are no adults in the room. Never have been. Not for anything of consequence; definitely not for something at the cutting edge of technology. It feels like that because we write hagiographies after the fact.

A piece I'm working on right now examines Apollo and ARPANET in context — both programs were despised by the experts of their day. If they'd failed, we'd be quoting those critics. But they succeeded and so their names are forgotten. Science advances one funeral at a time.

  — learning how to screen ideas for yourself on a self-developed baloney scale is one of the most important skills an educated adult can inculcate. It's sad that we've shied away from its explicit cultivation.

  – "smart"-ness is partly inculcated. A tool (or a mind) grows rusty with disuse.

  – why someone is saying something is tied to them, but information itself can be neutral. Its *presentation* can be biased. What's told / left out can be an issue. But the fact that the moon exists or William the Conqueror used castles for his invasion has nothing to do with me. Those facts will be true no matter who I am as a person.

  – yes, the way I have presented the information / the facts is tied to me. It's tied to my quirks of personality and my thought process as well as my personal biases (of which there are many). Which is why I make the effort of quoting primary / secondary sources.

  – I write these things because I want to learn from people who are more knowledgeable / smarter than me. And I want to be surrounded by people who are smarter than me.

  – you don't have to read it. it's just like a blogpost man, on the internet. doesn't really matter in the long run.